Chapter 8
EIGHT
NIK
“Get your meaty palms off that!” Alexey shouts at Dimitri grabbing one of the grenades from the weapons rack. “You set that off, your friend will be dead, and we cough up silver for the next three weeks.”
Dimitri places the grenade back carefully and shakes his large head.
All I can do is watch a few feet from the threshold.
Even standing this close has nausea twisting my stomach.
Our stomach, my wolf says. Take another step back.
I do and a small amount of relief sets in.
Assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols take up one section, while hand-to-hand weapons rest in a lethal row.
Axes glint with the familiar sting of silver, and next to them, daggers and throwing knives.
Alexey continues rustling through the crates at the back of the room, searching for something.
“Where are the crossbows?” Dimitri asks, glancing at everything individually.
“Nyet,” Alexey says and spits in response.
Dimitri looks at me first, and then Alexey’s small back. “Nyet? What do you mean, nyet?”
“Bow only stop a few werewolves if aim good. Ah! Here it is,” he says and slides a large crate toward Dimitri’s feet. “Go ahead, big man. Open it.”
Dimitri does with noticeable annoyance and pulls out one of the small boxes inside.
Metal rubs together, creating a slight hum as he lifts open the top.
Then, his eyes widen. In his palm is a bullet, not a standard 5.
56 round, but one dipped in solid silver.
Dimitri holds it out to display it, and I flinch another step back.
“These stop all werewolves, even crazy brother.” Alexey stands tall, seemingly proud of his stockpile that has me on the verge of puking.
“Where did you get this stuff, Alexey?” I manage.
One side of his face lifts in a smirk. “Guns, liberated from back of transport vehicle on the way to Moscow. Ammunition? Deal I made with comrade who makes bullets as hobby. Doesn’t ask questions.”
Dimitri grabs an axe off the wall and inspects it, dragging his thumb along the perfected edge. “And this?”
“I melted down the coin collection I’ve had since I was little one. Dipped it myself. A few thousand ruble seemed worthy tradeoff.”
“What do you say, Dimitri?” I ask, watching him study the armory walls. “Think we have a shot?”
Dimitri glances back at me and does something I haven’t seen in many years. Not since we would play as children on the property. Not since Ida. He grins. “Odds are looking better.”
“Oh!” Alexey says excitedly and filters through another stack of boxes. “I almost forgot. This is my favorite. Can only be used once but it packs one hell of a bang.”
We both watch him toss aside crate after crate until he finally hoists one up to the bench.
Alexey pulls out a toy monster truck, sets it on the ground, and rummages through what’s left in the box until he finds a plastic controller with a long metal antenna.
When he tilts the thumb stick forward, the truck darts across the ground, driving it straight into Dimitri’s shin.
“Yebat!” Dimitri curses, and I can’t help but grin. “Watch where you’re driving that fucking thing.”
Before Dimitri can kick it away, Alexey waves his hands frantically. “Stop! You could set it off.”
His face drains of color in an instant, foot stopping inches from the truck. “Wha—what do you mean set it off?”
“There’s enough C-4 on the undercarriage to blow through the gates of hell.”
“And you drove it into my fucking leg?” Dimitri shouts and takes a vicious stomp toward him, balling his large fists.
“Enough,” I say, and they both stop and turn toward me. “How does this help us, Alexey?”
His smirk returns and deepens, this time straining his small cheeks. “It is embedded with tiny silver bearings. Any werewolf within a twenty-yard radius will have a very painful day.”
The three of us sit at Alexey’s table, picking through the ready-to-eat meals he horded when the rest of the military packed up shop.
The small factory lights above us cast an odd shadow across the room, hiding the different pieces of machinery time forgot.
Lighting the ends of two cigarettes, Alexey hands one my way.
“Have you kept up your surveillance on the compound?” I ask after taking a drag.
Alexey lifts a brow. “Does werewolf shit in woods?”
Dimitri takes a bite of the food from its tan plastic bag and visibly contemplates, looking up at the ceiling. My expression is no different.
Alexey shrugs. “Figure of speech. When we were first assigned here, we only kept video feed on everything outside of compound. Breaching the gate was too much risk.”
I draw another inhale, igniting the chalky-white paper to ashes and await his response.
“Now, Uncle Alexey has become more technologically advanced.” He retrieves a small remote from his fatigues pocket, points it at the computer station, and clicks.
Every monitor feed changes to another vantage point inside the compound, ranging from the front doors, the gate, and even a point high enough up to observe the entire property.
How? is the first question to pass through my mind. How did he do this and more importantly, how did he do this without tipping off the pack he was watching?
“You’re wondering how I did it,” Alexey says as if reading my mind.
“It was easy. You werewolves have that keen hearing ability, sure. All I had to do was wait until an Antonov A330 jet passed over the Vostik property, send out my drones to where I needed them, and bam!” He slams his palm on the table, startling a forkful of food from reaching Dimitri’s lips.
“You can’t even hear your own thoughts when that big bastard passes by.
I can tell you everything. Patrol patterns.
How often their shipments arrive. How many civilians are on board.
” Alexey clicks another button and a recording takes over every monitor.
A top-down view of the pack leading shackled humans to the front doors. “Where are they from anyways?”
I sigh, take another drag, and stare at the concrete beneath my feet. “Los Angeles.”
Alexey tilts his head, peering curiously. “Let me see if I can connect the dots. You were forced to hunt in LA. There you meet a girl. She gets all your werewolf motors running. Then, your crazy fucking brother finds out and throws her in one of your shipping containers?”
I snarl out of impulse. “That’s not exactly how it happened …”
The human isn’t far off, my wolf says unapologetically. Great. If it wasn’t bad enough before, now the part of me I struggle to block out is siding with the man he wanted to dismember a few hours ago.
I have no issue killing him, even if he is right.
“I underestimated my brother. It was a mistake I will not make again.” I want to believe this.
Have to believe it, maybe. Our entire lives, Viktor never looked at me as his brother.
As his sibling. I’ve always known it deep down but couldn’t bring myself to admit it.
To him, I was just an obstacle. The one person standing between him and a legacy he felt he deserved even from an early age.
The youngest werewolf to ever shift. A prodigy at harnessing the strength and ferocity of the Vostik bloodline.
I can’t help but wonder what a few years with my mother might’ve changed for him.
Alexey turns off the monitors, saving me from another wave of guilt should Natalia show up on that camera feed.
He flicks his cigarette on the ashtray, dispelling most of the ash on the pile while more than a few flakes flitter around the air between us.
“We’ll need a plan. A diversion to draw their patrols to the opposite side of the compound so you can get in and out. ”
“Why don’t you use your fucking toy?” Dimitri says with a scoff.
I glance up at the ceiling, counting each tile free of water damage. There’s fifteen total. “That’s not a bad idea, actually.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You know how long it took me to build that fucking toy?” he asks, mocking Dimitri and earning another scowl from him.
“If I’m going to use it, my baby won’t just be a distraction.
It was designed to take out as many of those monsters as I can.
No offense, Nikolai.” Alexey waves a dismissive hand in my direction.
Dimitri finishes his apocalypse-proof food and lets his fork rest among the spoils. “You know that property better than either of us, Nikolai. What should we do?”
I finish what’s left of my cigarette and snuff it out in the ashtray. “Alexey?”
He furrows his brow and crosses his arms over the military fatigues, hiding the nametape reading Sarkov. “Da?”
“How much more of that C-4 do you have?”